


Tabula Rasa

by melo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Babies, Future Fic, Implied Death, Implied Mpreg, Implied Relationships, Multi, implied future death, implied implications, implied past death, so many implications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:21:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melo/pseuds/melo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone wants a clean slate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabula Rasa

**Author's Note:**

> Angst. Can't stop, won't stop.

_“I’m sorry. I know I said I’d get home earlier tonight, but the Phoenix accounts...”_

“No, it’s fine, Ben,” she says, grabbing the groceries from the back seat, cell phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. “I’ll just leave you something in the fridge.”

The walk between the driveway and the front door is a short one, but the stones are slick with half-melted snow. The salt that Ben sprinkled on the walk that morning isn’t quite enough, so she reminds herself to add gravel as she picks her way across the uneven ground, plastic bags swinging from both hands.  

_“I’m really, really sorry. So incredibly sorry. So sorry that even Dennis in IT is sorry. I’ll make it up to you, anything you want. Promise!”_

She knows Ben can’t see it, but she smiles anyway. It gets lonely, spending the evenings in an empty house, but she knows Ben tries. Besides, there are worse ways to live.

“I’ll hold you to it. See you later.”

_“Love you.”_

She hangs up, ignoring the cautious almost-question. She sets the groceries on the porch swing, wincing a little at the creak of icy chains. She’s in the process of pulling her keys out of her purse when she notices that the door is ajar.

She’s instantly on guard, setting her purse down alongside the groceries. Her eyes flick over the pristine white of the snow covered lawn; up and down the slush on the walk. It’s only now that she focuses on the misshapen footprints, partly hidden by her own. She’d assumed they were the mailman’s, but the large boot prints now fill her with weary dread.

She strips the scarf from her neck and the gloves from her hands. They’ll only get in the way, so she discards them. She toes off her boots as well, wanting to avoid the squelching and squeaking they’ll inevitably make on the hallway tiles. Then she reaches into her coat for the pepper spray. She wishes she had something a little more substantial to wield as she enters cautiously, pushing the door open with one hand, pepper spray held ready in the other. Her socked feet make little sound as she proceeds to the kitchen. Hopefully the intruder has already left, but if not, at least she’ll have something sharp.

Unfortunately, the kitchen greets her with something that is neither welcome nor expected.

“Alice Browning,” says the man sitting at her breakfast table, flipping through her mail. “Not the most creative choice of name, Allison.”

He looks just as Allison remembers him; the same dark shirt and leather jacket, the same sullen aura and predatory hunch of shoulders. Besides a little silver at his temples and a few extra creases in his brow, Derek Hale is unchanged.

“What are you doing here?” Allison tightens her grip on the pepper spray. “How did you find me?”

Derek looks up from the envelopes in his hand. “Can’t an old friend drop in for a visit?”

“We’re hardly friends.”

“Well, we have mutual... friends.”

Allison snorts. “A long time ago, maybe, but I’m done, Derek; have been for years. This house isn’t some secret base. The desk job isn’t a cover. I have a real job and this is my real house, so leave.”

Derek’s expression remains impassive and he doesn’t move from his seat. “I’m not here to cause trouble–”

“Your _presence_ _alone_ is going to bring trouble!”

“Listen, I need you–”

“No, _I_ need you to go to Hell, which is exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to get off of my chair and out of my kitchen. You are not welcome in my house. You are not welcome on my driveway. You are not even welcome in the same _state_ as me, so you’d better leave now before I decide I prefer your _blood_ over my–!”

Allison cuts herself off, eyes widening as she identifies a new sound in her house. Derek just looks at her with that eerily blank face as she listens.

Something is crying in the den. A baby is crying in the den.

“What is that?”

“A baby.”

“I know that! I mean, what is a baby doing in my den?”

Instead of answering, Derek looks down at the letters in his hand. “Why don’t you have a seat, Allison,” he says, as if he has the right to invite Allison to take a chair in her own home.

“Answer my question first,” she shoots back, but Derek doesn’t move a muscle and in the interest of expelling him from her life as quickly as possible, Allison takes a seat. She bites down on her irritation, but she keeps the hand holding the pepper spray on the table top pre-emptively aimed at the werewolf across from her.

“So, you and... Ben Browning.” Derek quirks an eyebrow. “Your real husband to go along with your real job and your real house?”

Allison doesn’t say anything, but Derek doesn’t seem to expect a response and just carries on with his surreal interview. “Met in your last year of college, got married, got jobs, got a nice little house in the suburbs, complete with a white picket fence and a porch swing. Picture perfect, but...” Derek shuffles one of the letters to the top of the pile in his hands. It’s from the clinic. “No baby.”

Allison grits her teeth. “Don’t tell me that the baby is a gift. Whose is it anyway?”

Derek hesitates, fingers twitching almost imperceptibly. “I need you to look after her.”

“Oh my God, it’s yours, isn’t it?” Allison stares at Derek who stares back, eyes unreadable. Allison tries to imagine Derek sitting by a hospital bed, placing a kiss upon a sweaty and exhausted brow, or cradling a tiny pink bundle to his chest for the first time. Unsurprisingly, she can’t. The only scene she can picture is of Derek in a small dark room, blood-wet hand clenched desperately with another’s as screams of pain ring louder and louder, because that’s always how things are with Derek; blood and pain and death.

“No,” Derek finally says, but it sounds like a lie. “She’s not mine.”

Allison doesn’t bother to ask why Derek wants her to look after the baby. The last thing she’d want Derek to be is a father, too.

“How long do you need me to look after her for?”

Derek doesn’t say anything.

“You want me to adopt her,” Allison says, voice flat. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding, Derek. When I left, I didn’t leave because I wanted to be _more_ involved with hunting and werewolves–“

“I know. That’s why it has to be you,” Derek says, setting the letter from the fertility clinic down.

“Excuse me?”

“Boyd is dead.” Allison snaps her mouth shut, any protests dying in her throat. “Erica too. It’s just me and Isaac now, and we can’t... we can’t look after a baby.”

“What about Lydia?” Allison asks, but the suggestion sounds weak to her own ears.

“She left nearly as quickly as you did. The only difference is she left the country.”

“What about... what about Stiles?”

Derek’s eyes close and he goes as still as the grave. It’s only by the slight angling of his head that Allison can infer he’s listening to the cries of the baby in the den.

“Oh,” Allison says. She swallows the bitter flavour on her tongue. She doesn’t even bother suggesting an orphanage or foster care. Derek has too many trust issues to count, but he still prefers the devil he knows.

“She’s not a monster,” Derek suddenly says, eyes snapping open and locking with Allison’s.

“She’s not a monster,” Allison agrees.

“She’s just a baby; a child,” Derek’s fingers curl into fists on the table. “And she won’t always be a child, but she’ll never, ever be a monster.”

The kitchen is quiet and the only sound Allison can hear is the regular tick of the clock on the wall. The baby has stopped crying, but she’s sure that Derek continues to monitor the baby’s every breath; every beat of the baby’s heart.

“What I am... It’s not supposed to be a curse,” Derek says, and he sounds so tired. It’s a fatigue that’s echoed in Allison’s own bones. “And it shouldn’t be one. I won’t let it, which is why you have to take her.”

“You’d really leave her with a hunter rather than take care of her yourself?”

“But you’re not a hunter. Not anymore. You got out, and I... I will never be able to do that.”

Allison turns her head, not quite cruel enough to observe Derek in his weaker moments. The grim set of his face hasn’t changed and his voice still sounds detached, but there’s something lost and yearning in his eyes as he looks out the window to the snow dusted garden. If Allison didn’t hate him so much, she thinks she would lay a comforting hand over his.

“I don’t want her to grow up on the run. I don’t want her to grow up, secretly groomed to be a killer. I don’t want people to hate her for simply being born, and I don’t want her to ever know just how dark the night can get,” Derek whispers. “I can’t give her a life that is free of those things, but you can.”

“Can I really?” Allison sighs. “You found me, didn’t you? If you can find me, what’s to stop other werewolves? Other hunters?”

“I wasn’t able to find you through any human means; you’re very much untraceable. I was only able to find you because I’m the alpha, and bonds run strong... however removed or residual they are.”

Allison freezes in her seat. The air feels too cold on her skin and something old and buried threatens to crack open in her chest. “I see.”

“Please,” Derek says, and it is the first time Allison has ever heard that word pass his lips.

She never wants to hear it again.

When she first stepped into the kitchen, she thought that Derek looked unchanged, but she sees now that she was wrong. Derek’s shoulders are thin and hunched beneath a jacket that seems too large. Dark smudges underscore tired eyes and everything about him seems sharper, like a statue chipped to pieces. “I know you don’t owe me anything, and I know that you have more than enough reason to say ‘no,’ but this isn’t about me. She’s just – She’s... She isn’t mine. She can’t be mine.”

After everything, it’s not his words that make Allison cave, it’s the way he says them. Derek doesn’t cry or beg or threaten. He doesn’t even raise his voice. The ferocity of Derek’s youth is absent; his presence is no longer filled with the thrum of waiting storms. It’s almost as if she’s alone in the kitchen, and however much she’s changed over the years, she hasn’t changed enough to abandon a baby to a ghost.

“I’ll take her,” Allison says, and she thinks the slow blink of Derek’s eyes might be a sign of relief. “What’s her name?”

“She doesn’t have one yet.”

“What?”

“She’s not mine to name,” Derek explains, and despite it all, Allison aches for him. She spent too many nights with her hands on her belly, praying for a child, to not understand on some level.

“If you won’t give her a name, then is there anything else you’d like to give her? Anything you want me to tell her?” Allison asks. “In the future,” she adds, because she has no illusions about Derek returning.

“No,” Derek says, as Allison thought he would.

They slide their chairs back and stand up. Allison walks Derek to the front door. She doesn’t pause by the den and she doesn’t ask Derek if he’d like to see his daughter one last time. For years, Allison thought herself a shell, a husk that had fallen to ashes, but she knows now it’s not true. She looks at Derek and sees what it really means to lose everything. She listens to the quiet gurgle of the baby in the den and feels something warm spark in her heart.

“I’ll love her like my own,” Allison says as they stand by her open door, and it’s not mean spirited or mocking. The socks on her feet are poor insulation against the cold threshold. “She’ll never wonder why she was left behind. She’ll never wonder what happened to her parents. I’ll make sure she won’t even know what she is.” Allison hopes Derek takes comfort in her promises. “She will never know you.”

Derek nods, stepping off the porch and under the drifting snow, and Allison doesn’t really care, but too much has happened; too many things have been lost and sacrificed. She asks, “What now? It’s just you and Isaac. What’s left for you to do?”

Derek doesn’t turn around. “ _Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent_ ,” he says, and Allison shivers, her hands wet with phantom blood.

Allison doesn’t watch Derek disappear into the snow. Allison brings the groceries inside and locks the door behind her. Allison sends a text to Ben, asking for baby formula and diapers and then curls up in the den, her daughter safe in her arms. 


End file.
